Original news and analysis on international IP policy
Niels Louwaars of the Centre for Genetic Resources, Wageningen University, The Netherlands, discusses the importance of plant breeder’s rights. He makes the case for a carefully balanced protection for plant breeders and changes to patents in agriculture, in order to ensure a competitive, diversified supply of plant varieties and seeds.
A recent European Parliament resolution on a European Financial Transaction Tax could represent an important resource for a WHO-led initiative to find sustainable financing for research into diseases afflicting poor populations.
The use of arbitration across the Caribbean has been largely within the context of trade union disputes and is still something of a novelty in resolving commercial and private disputes in the region, Abiola Inniss writes.
Benny Spiewak writes: There used to be a time when Brazil meant almost exclusively Carnival, Samba and Soccer. Well, those days are over and there is an undeniable message that will echo through the knowledge-based, creative, innovative world: Wake-Up, World, It’s Tropicalization Time!
On the eve of a meeting of the WHO working group on substandard/spurious/falsely-labelled/falsified/counterfeit medical products, research-based pharmaceutical industry group IFPMA sets out thoughts on building global consensus to address fake medicines.
A recent decision issued by Advocacia-Geral da União (Advocacy-General of the Union) restricts the role performed by Anvisa - the National Agency for Health Surveillance - in examining pharmaceutical patent applications. This may represent a huge setback for commitments made by Brazilian government related to the protection of public health, writes Felipe Carvalho.
Pedro Paranaguá writes: Brazil's new Minister of Culture is under severe pressure from civil society groups, academics and some artists. After just a few weeks in power, Minister Ana de Hollanda issued an order to take the Creative Commons license off the Ministry's website. Why is that a problem?
A panoramic view of the IP situation in the Caribbean would present to the observer a carnival of Olympic size replete with politicians, diplomats, rights advocates, consumer groups, law enforcement, and impotent jurists, all gyrating discordantly to the WIPO band while Caribbean citizens look on, or are pulled or shoved in, writes Abiola Inniss.
The US organizes a sophisticated industrial policy regime by exploiting an exception in the World Trade Organization agreement that allows governments to subsidize research and development carried out by private firms, writes Professor Fred Block.
The Intellectual Property Watch Monthly Edition features top news on international IP policymaking, the latest on who is coming and going in the international IP community, news briefs and more. The December/January edition is now available for subscribers at: http://www.ip-watch.org/user/newsletter.
In the Caribbean, issues of traditional knowledge in intellectual property are hardly considered to be of special significance to the majority of policymakers and, except for a few pockets of interest groups such as a group of Rastafarians in Jamaica, the average citizen is uninformed on the subject. The protection of the cultural heritage of the region through a normative system of law is exceedingly necessary for the survival of our unique brand of cultural expression, writes Abiola Inniss.
This year marks the first time a website address may exist fully in Chinese, Russian, Arabic, or other non-Latin scripts. Ten years from now, the percentage of English content could easily drop below 25 percent. But there are still obstacles to this linguistically local revolution, writes John Yunker.